37

They came for him three hours after sundown, ten days after the message had flown to Jerusalem. David had been asleep when the sound of a helicopter woke him up. He got up, shivered in the cold, and looked through both window embrasures. He could see nothing but the distant snow-capped mountains in the moonlight. There was much more snow up there now, he noticed. Maybe the helo had been just passing by, he thought. He had never heard one at night. Then, fifteen minutes later, he heard the truck cranking over and knew that something was up. He lit a candle, washed his face, and got some clothes on. For some reason, this time he fished out his own street clothes.

A half hour later one of the monks who often sat with him in the garden unlocked the door, knocked, and came in. He was carrying an oil lantern, and he smiled when he saw how David was dressed. He indicated that David was to come with him. They went to the front gate, where two soldiers were waiting.

Comes now the big question, he thought. They were either going to let him go or take him to a real prison. Or worse. He took hope from the fact that everyone was acting pretty nonchalant about what was going on. There was nothing in the soldiers’ faces to indicate they were going to execute him. Besides, they didn’t need to send a helicopter to do that.

They slipped on a set of plastic handcuffs but this time did not blindfold him. They put him on a wooden bench in the back of the canvas-covered truck and hooked his cuffs up to a metal rod. Then the truck bumped and banged its way down the same mountain track he’d come up before. What, he thought—almost two months ago? He could see the trail opening out behind him as they went down. Briefly he considered escape. No. Nothing but wild goats could survive out there in this wilderness, and even they were pretty thin.

They did blindfold him once they put him in the helicopter and strapped him in. This time he sat back without being told to and relaxed as best he could, trying not to think of all the possibilities here. It was very cold once they got up to altitude and leveled off. He remembered stories of CIA contract people throwing Vietcong prisoners out of helicopters while other prisoners watched, supposedly as an incentive for the others to talk. He shivered again, this time not entirely because of the cold. They landed after about a half-hour flight and then ground-taxied a long way before the turbine spooled down and then went silent, which was when he heard the noise of a propjet, a big propjet from the sound of it, somewhere near the helicopter. The doors opened, and the blindfold was briskly removed.

They were parked at an airport or possibly a military airfield, he wasn’t sure which. It was nearly midnight, and the field was lighted but not active. He saw some hangars in the distance and a tower with its rotating beacon flashing through the night. Parked sideways right in front of them was an Israeli Hercules C-130 decked out in desert camouflage paint. The hatch was open forward, and two engines were turning on the other side. A group of men stood by the hatch, looking at the helicopter. Two of them appeared to be aircrew in flight suits, but then he recognized Ellerstein and Israel Gulder. For some reason he felt better that Ellerstein was there.

A soldier reached in, unlocked the cuffs, and then indicated that David was to step out and go to the Hercules. He helped David out of the helicopter and then nodded his head toward the men standing by the hatch ladder. David walked over, stretching his arms and rubbing his wrists. He stopped when he reached the ladder. A warm draft from the turning engines blew under the belly of the aircraft, and he could smell the stink of kerosene fuel.

Gulder was handing him something. It was a small leather folder. David looked inside and found his wallet, his passport, and what looked like an airline ticket envelope.

“Mr. Hall,” Gulder said, his face a complete blank, “this is good-bye, I’m afraid. You are leaving our country. Bon voyage.”

“Is this going to be an improvement over the monastery, or something a little more final?” David asked.

Gulder just smiled, said something in Hebrew to Ellerstein, and then walked away to a waiting staff car. Ellerstein tipped his head toward the hatch and followed David into the aircraft. It was cold and dark inside the cargo bay, the only light provided by a row of small red lights in the overhead. An aircrewman wearing a cranial headset came in behind them and stood at the front end of the cargo bay.

Ellerstein picked a seat and sat down, indicating David should sit next to him. He was wearing a heavy jacket and wool slacks.

“So, what’s happening here?” David asked.

“You are being released, Mr. Hall. This aircraft will take you to Greece, to the American military field at Hellenikon. A consular officer will validate that ticket back to the States, and you will leave at oh nine hundred for New York.”

“That’s it? No conditions?”

“Just one, Mr. Hall, and it is voluntary, of course.”

“Oh, yeah, right, of course. Voluntary,” David said, rubbing his wrists again.

“No, it is, really. We ask that you remain quiet about your role in the discovery of the Temple artifacts. Right now the whole world believes Yehudit Ressner is the sole discoverer. As agreed between you, yes?”

“Yes. No problem at all.”

He waited for the next condition, about the weapons business, but Ellerstein was getting up. “It was interesting to meet you, Mr. Hall,” he said, extending his hand. “Most interesting. If you should further, um, correspond with Dr. Ressner, please be gentle, okay?”

David shook his hand but didn’t know quite what to say. “I will, Professor,” was all he could manage. “Thank you.” Then Ellerstein was walking back up to the hatch, where the crewman helped him down the retractable ladder and then closed it up. The crewman came down and made sure David was strapped in, gave him a blanket to wrap around his legs, and went forward. Five minutes later they were airborne over the black Mediterranean.

David undid the waist belt, removed the blanket, and stood up to stretch. The four big turboprop engines had settled into a steady synchronized whine, and it wasn’t too noisy in the cargo bay. He was looking out the single porthole when he became aware that there was someone behind him. He turned around to find Judith standing there, her hands in her pockets. She looked like a football player in pads because of the oversized flight jacket she was wearing. Her eyes looked tired, and the dark pouches were back. He looked into her face for a moment and then embraced her. She relaxed and leaned against him. They stood this way for a long minute, and then David let her go and stepped back. She pressed a hand against his new beard and smiled. He led her to a seat on the long bench.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll bite. What’s going on?”

She smiled. “You owe this to Yossi Ellerstein. He convinced Gulder to let me come see you.”

“He didn’t know about that wine bowl, did he?”

She smiled. “Absolutely not, but he did figure it out pretty quickly once that story got loose in Jerusalem.”

He nodded. “That could have gone two ways,” he said. “They’d either give up and boot me out of the country or turn me into a good Palestinian.”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure how he managed it,” she said. “The media is in overload these days: Western nations defaulting, Arab uprisings, the Temple artifacts. His theory was that heavy water would be too hard a story. Too technical. No one would care.”

“How did the objects look when they brought them out, cleaned them up?”

“Spectacular beyond belief,” she said. “Even damaged, the menorah simply glistens, and the scrolls were intact inside.”

“Glows, hunh?” he asked. “Like a certain bowl?”

She giggled. “What bowl? No one knows anything about a bowl.”

“But the patriarch from Jerusalem—”

“Ah, yes, the patriarch. He went to the monastery. He returned. Apparently the room failed to glow.”

David sat back against the insulation on the side of the cargo bay. “Sure as hell did when I was there.”

“Yossi Ellerstein questioned me about that. Had I ever seen this mysterious glow.”

“And?”

“I told him yes, I had. The bowl does not glow: The room it’s in does. Know what he said?”

“What?”

“That the glow appears only when the bowl is in the presence of someone who believes Judah Sicarius’s testament.”

“That would be—”

“You and I, yes,” she said. “For now, it remains at the monastery chapel, and the monks remain outside. Yossi said that the government would open an inquiry on the bowl, just as soon as you and I come back to Israel.”

He took her hand. “That might be a long damned time, Judith. Especially the you-and-me part. The coming back to Israel? I don’t think so.”

“Well then, Mr. Hall. Mission accomplished, as Mr. Gulder would say, yes?”

He shook his head in wonder. “What about you?” he asked. “What are you doing here on my freedom bird?”

Her expression changed. “Yossi thought it might be nice for me to take a break from all the media circus business,” she said. “Suggested a trip to America. Perhaps give some lectures, but mostly to get away from it all for a little while.”

“At this juncture? With all the media interest?”

“Well, his ‘suggestion’ just might have to do with what was said up there on the mountain. About the nuclear stuff? I’m the other person who knows, remember?”

“Ah,” he said. “Yes.” David remembered Ellerstein’s comment about corresponding. He took her hands in his. “Will you come stay with me, Judith? In Washington? I mean, I’ve got lots of room. A housekeeper, even. I could show you Washington, hell, the whole country. If you’d like to, of course. I mean, that is, if you don’t have—”

“Yes, I would like that, Mr. David Hall,” she said, a shy smile on her face. “I think I would like that very much. Although it’s Yehudit, not Judith.”

He grinned like a teenager. Yehudit it would be. Maybe she could teach him some Hebrew, against the day when he went back to Israel. When they went back.

When pigs flew.

*   *   *

“I hope you’re right about all this,” Gulder said as the army staff car left the airbase and headed back toward the lights of Haifa.

“PM thought so,” Ellerstein pointed out, “and he’s the one under the gun from the Americans. The settlement question. Hamas making nice with Fatah. Egypt ‘resetting’ their diplomatic relations with us. Get this problem five thousand miles away from here—that’s a good plan, he thinks.”

Gulder grunted in the darkness of the backseat.

“You’ve alerted the appropriate people at the U.S. Embassy?” Ellerstein asked.

“Yes,” Gulder said. “One of our special friends has had a word with one of their special friends. Once Hall gets back to the States someone will come around, quite informally, of course. Invoking old associations when Hall was in the nuclear nonproliferation world. Just a few questions about some rumors of heavy water diversion at Dimona.”

“As a test?”

“Yes, as a test,” Gulder said. “Who knows what he will do. If he doesn’t talk, the matter is settled. If he does, then the PM can say to that dreadful woman, look, you people are pushing too hard. See what almost happened? What passions you’re stirring up here? Zealots again. We need some breathing room here. Back off, Madame Secretary. Get back on your fancy airplane and go fix the Arab street, eh?”

Ellerstein smiled to himself in the darkness. One of his professors back in New York had told him a golden rule: If you can’t dazzle them with brains, baffle them with bullshit. The cover stories were about right. Subtle, even, if he didn’t mind saying so himself. Gulder had had his doubts, but the PM had seen it right away. Besides, the American, Hall, had done Israel an amazing turn with his theories about the ancient Zealots. Ultimately, they owed the real debt to Adrian Draper. One of their own.

“Such amazing things they discovered.”

“Yes, indeed,” Gulder said. “That menorah. The scrolls, even the holders. Amazing, and so beautiful. Imagine what the whole thing must have looked like, so very long ago.”

“And the tablets—the bricks. All those names. Josephus got it right.”

“Nine hundred and eighty, not nine hundred and sixty.”

Ellerstein gave him a spare-me look. “Tell me,” he asked, “what did the Pharisees and Scribes decide about that bronze bowl?”

“A run-of-the-mill first-century wine bowl,” Gulder replied. “Nothing special. The patriarch was, apparently, not amused.”

The car phone rang. Gulder picked it up, listened, and began to dictate instructions. Ellerstein tuned him out, sat back in his seat, and fished for his pipe. Judith had told him again about the final lines on the wall, what she thought they might mean, and what that plain little bowl might really be. Of course, the lines had faded after being soaked during their escape, so now, once again, there was no evidence.

Something new for the Christians to argue about for a change, he thought with a smile. Wouldn’t that have been something, though.